I'm baaaaaaaaaaaack!

Hi everyone!

Wow, it's been forever since I've posted here. But being as the umpteen life changes are currently past (moved to Cleveland, finished my CFY, found an awesome roommate, in the process of building a social network here, etc.), I finally actually have a summer and can actually post again!

First thing: fellow August grads, was it not awesome to send that paperwork off?! :) We're gonna be CCC's! Finally! A long and crazy road it's been to this point...but we're here and from now on we're even more awesome. Congrats to all EMU speech path grads who are reading this - we did it!!!! Let me know what you're up to, leave comments or whatever - I know several of you have traversed back to MI after moving away, so what are you doing now? happy to be back? :)

For my part, I'll be here in Cleveland for a year or two or three more, then who knows where - that's where the Scrabble tourism comes in (see scrabblecouple.blogspot.com if you have no clue what I'm talking about and are actually curious). I want a warm big city. I'm so over the season of winter. :-P lol I do not plan to move back to Michigan - visit, yes (I'll be in town next week for a bit to see people! leave comments or email me if you wanna meet up) - but nothing permanent. I like Ann Arbor, but I'm done there.

Cleveland is a very neat city. I've met a lot of neat people and I thoroughly adore my apartment. I'm right next door to a cleaners, a grocery store, a hair salon, and a coffee shop - what more could you want in life?! Oh, yes - Scrabble clubs. We have a ton of those, too. Michael and I have counted four in the area - which means that three to four nights per week, we could be playing Scrabble if we so chose. Rocky River and Independence are our favorites even just for sheer turn-out, but the other two are cool too.

A lot of my life lately has been hanging out with Michael and studying or playing Scrabble. I won't go into Scrabble babble here - we'll save that for my blog post on the other blog - but it's been incredibly fun. We have a tourney tomorrow in Rocky River, a tourney next weekend in Toronto, and then it's time for NATIONALS in Dayton where the top prize for my division (D3) is looking like $2,500 - not a bad chunk of change for playing an awesome game!!! Studying is therefore necessary, and on-going, and will continue. I'm hoping I can seriously kick some butt these next couple weeks on the studying front. ADEILRST - DILATERS, REDTAILS, LARDIEST.....come on, brain, you need to retain this stuff!

Cooking has also become another big thing for Michael and me. Anyone have any really good recipes you want to share, especially those of the healthy variety? We totally have several that have become staples for us...beer cheese soup, pesto pasta with goat cheese, goat cheese stuffed chicken in white wine sauce, cedar plank salmon, olive-orange chicken scallopine...etc.

Also have been visiting people and having people visit! Went to see Cassandra in May and she's coming here in August, went to Snu & Greg's wedding a few weeks ago, Soumya came to visit Cleveland, Apryl's coming at the end of July....good times!

We're also in the very early stages of planning for a 30th birthday party for Michael in December - he's a Christmas baby, of course, so this is gonna be a little bit of a tough one to schedule. We're thinking it'll be in Toledo, since that's a good sort of halfway point for everyone from Ann Arbor, Port Clinton, and Cleveland. On the lookout for cool things in Toledo to do...chill bars and whatnot...and always trying to think of more ideas for what to do!

Okay, back to studying, but I'll be posting here more often now that it's truly summer for me! Hope everyone is doing well and I'll talk to you all sometime soon!